


Seeking Happiness

by athoroughlybakedpotato (acommontater)



Series: Life, Love, and Languages [3]
Category: Yuri!!! on Ice (Anime)
Genre: Character Study, Gen, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-05-19
Updated: 2017-05-19
Packaged: 2018-11-02 17:08:43
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 765
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10948986
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/acommontater/pseuds/athoroughlybakedpotato
Summary: They ask him the same questions every season.And for the first time in over a decade, Viktor has no answers.(Or: Language is sometimes not the most effective way to understanding.)





	Seeking Happiness

**Author's Note:**

> Talking around discussions of depression, music, and Viktor.
> 
> Title is from Rachmoninoff's 'Fate', Op. 21, No. 1. (A composer I hc Viktor being a big fan of.)

“What kind of music are you looking for this season, Viktor?” his composer asks, and Viktor, for the first season in over a decade, doesn’t have an answer. 

/

He thinks about what theme he wants and finds everything lacking.

He _remembers_  that he must know how it feels to want to want something, but he can’t manage it. Can’t find it. 

/

“Longing.” he says eventually. “Maybe an aria? Striving for something you can’t find anymore.”

“What language?”

“Whatever you think suits it best.”

His composer nods over the grainy video connection and tells him he’ll have a few options for him by the end of next month. 

/ 

Viktor listens to different version of the song- slower, faster, changing the instrumentation to make it simpler or more complex, fiddling with the wording- and sends his comments back to get another version.

He hears it sung in Russian, English, French, but decides easily to keep it in the original Italian. It’s the only thing that stays the same.

It’s easier to try and feel it if he doesn’t speak the language, gives him something to focus on. 

/ 

“What’s the poem about?” 

“A man singing for love he wants to find or rediscover. He half-dreams of a woman who-” 

“No.” 

“Sorry?” 

“Not a woman, a man.” 

“Oh, we could change it to a female vocalist, n-” 

“No, no. A man, singing to another man.” 

“...okay. I’ll have the lyricist tweak the wording and get back to you.” 

/ 

Viktor listens to the final version of the aria and feels….

He starts it again and waits and he….. Starts it again and waits and he feels….. 

He listens to it on loop, until the vibrations of the piano strings have embedded themselves in his brain. 

He feels…. 

He feels like he should feel something more than he does. 

There’s a gap, a missed step like a swoop in his stomach where he knows a feeling should be and is not.

He listens to it again, and again, and… 

/ 

This season it’s not so much skating to show how much he wants something, as it is trying to rediscover the want to want something again. 

He watches old programs of his own and can see the fierce delight on his face as he tells his stories. 

He can’t find a story for this program- the song is just a man who is stuck, lost and longing, for something he can no longer find. A static figure, stuck. 

What story is there in that? 

/ 

He wins and he wins and he wins again- winning is something measurable, tangible- cool metal under his fingers and lips to show that he is still real. 

There is no joy in it. 

But it proves he is still there. 

/ 

He knows all of his competitors, but it still takes him a moment to recognize Katsuki Yuuri with his hair down and glasses on. 

He’s a fan, like so many other younger skaters- Viktor can see echoes of his own style in Yuuri’s programs. 

Viktor remembers the first time he crashed and burned in the senior division, the pressure of being a wunderkind making him crack. He wants to offer consolation, but isn’t sure how such a stand-offish skater would react to what might be seen as pity. 

But Yuuri walks away, after making an almost horrified face, and Viktor… feels faintly let down for some reason. 

/ 

He watches as Yuuri gets progressively drunker at the banquet the following night. 

The banquet ends up being the most fun he’s ever had at one. He genuinely laughs and smiles and Yuuri Katsuki sweeps him off of his feet- nearly literally a few times as they dance. 

(He could write odes about Yuuri biceps, but that thought occurs later.) 

Yuuri flings himself unabashed at him and offers him something new. Viktor suddenly remembers what it feels like to want something. 

/ 

He doesn’t hear from Yuuri after that, and suddenly understands longing again as well. 

/ 

It invigorates his performance, lets him understand the music. 

He can suddenly feels the longing of the singer in a way he didn’t before and he goes to Tokyo and hopes that maybe he’ll see Yuuri. 

(He doesn’t.) 

((He is more disappointed than he feels he has a right to be.)) 

/ 

A video goes viral and he gets tagged in it about ten million times before he watches it. 

He watches Yuuri skate and suddenly, he understands the music. 

He can hear it so clearly when Yuuri skates. Like Yuuri understands and gives it back to him even clearer than before.

/ 

He goes to Japan.


End file.
